The withdrawal of the Liberal Party from a number of large Sydney councils has unsurprisingly led to a decline in the Sydney-wide Liberal vote, while Labor and the Greens have produced their highest primary vote in Greater Sydney since 2004. It may well be a record high for Labor, but it’s definitely a record high for the Greens.
Up until this point, most of my analysis of the NSW council elections has been contained to one council.
In one sense this makes sense – each local council is its own little polity and has its own stories. Part of what I find fascinating is the details of the stories, and you lose that detail when you try and detect broader trends that go beyond council borders. But it’s still worth looking at what stories tend to pop up again and again.
Before I zoom out, I thought I would also highlight some of the smaller councils that grabbed my interest. There are simply too many councils to cover them all, but these are a few that have been sent to me.
Byron
After some spotty live results earlier in the night, I turned last night’s liveblog into a run through of the end-of-night results in some of the biggest councils, covering Bayside to Lake Macquarie alphabetically before collapsing to bed at 1am. Here I go continuing the story.
Liverpool
6:00 – Polls have just closed in the New South Wales council elections. I will be covering the highlights of the results tonight. Hopefully by the end of the night we have a rough sense of the trends in the bigger councils.
It’s voting day! I am out and about today but feel free to talk about the goings-on in this thread. I’ll be back at 6pm with election night coverage.
This is the last in my series of posts looking at various trends in NSW council elections.
The proportional voting system used for New South Wales councils doesn’t tend to produce huge one-party majorities in most areas. It often results in no party having control, and when they do have a majority it is usually a slim one.
Ben is joined by Roberta Ryan, Professor of Local Government at the University of Newcastle, to discuss some broader trends in NSW local government in the lead-up to this weekend’s election, including council amalgamations and the role of political parties.
Voters at the upcoming council elections aren’t just voting for their local councillors. In a number of councils voters are also voting on questions put to them by the council. Many of these are referendums required to change the constitutional structure of the council, while some are just asking the opinion of the voters.